The human price paid for luxury fashion goes back more than a century
The modern globalised fast-fashion market has long been under pressure to eliminate sweatshop conditions. Poor worker conditions have persisted even as globalisation of fashion has enabled well-known European brands to spread internationally, as well as enabling the emergence of new fashion production and design centres since the 1990s, such as in Shanghai, China. But a historical examination of workers and technology in the fashion industry in late 19th-century France shows that these trends reproduce an industrial model. In the past, rapid expansion deskilled the workforce – mainly women – through technology, in order to respond to constant growth in demand for clothing at lower cost. “We use history as a lens to understand what’s going on, sometimes to see some things have changed, but also some things don’t change much,” says MISS(opens in new window) project coordinator Véronique Pouillard, professor in Modern International History at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History(opens in new window) at the University of Oslo. For example, she notes the garment industry in Zhejiang, a province in China near Shanghai, has been openly modelling the development of its global brands on that of Paris in the 19th century, when luxury brands were emerging in France.
Understanding changes through history
“The MISS project is geared towards not just retrieving antiquarian data, but also trying to understand societal changes by gathering historical data on production and consumption,” Pouillard explains. Analysis of historical records of mechanised production in France’s fashion industry in the 1890s carried out by fashion historian Audrey Millet, a postdoctoral fellow in Pouillard’s department, with support from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions(opens in new window) programme, found that productivity gains during that period were not necessarily due to technical innovations such as sewing machines. Rather it was slave-like workshop conditions and aggressive pricing policies which led to a reduction in production costs.
A human price paid for luxury brands
The project compares this with present-day clothing brands involved in producing hyper-cheap apparel. “There are problems with human rights because the clothes are being produced so cheaply,” Pouillard points out, linking this with another EU-funded project that she leads: Creative IPR: The history of intellectual property rights in creative industries. “We looked at national brands. With ‘Made in France’, we think of the image of Paris and prestige is involved. Yet this does not assess the conditions of production. It does not tell us how the objects are actually made,” she explains, pointing to their jointly published(opens in new window) research. “History shows that the challenges are recurrent. So that means we need to persist in enforcing the rules,” Pouillard says, adding: “It's important to have strong [regulatory] frameworks and to keep human rights at the centre of conditions of production.”
Diaspora production in Europe
Unable to carry out fieldwork in Shanghai due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the project looked at the lesser-known Chinese diaspora in Europe. “Though luxury industries are symbolic of France, there has always been an openness to international networks and migrants,” notes Pouillard, noting the diaspora-led industry is characterised by small to medium-sized firms that produce exclusive garments for women in very small quantities. “Diasporas produce clothing in Europe which may have a ‘Made in Europe’ tag, yet conditions of production may not be rigorously applied according to law,” she remarks. There can be negative effects on workers “if there’s no transparency, and no follow-up such as inspectors who can go to the factory floor and check labour conditions.” Under pressure from various groups, some middle-market clothing brands in Europe now provide full records about their production, including in China. For example, these explain where the workshops are and other details, “so it’s possible for a consumer to check where and how an item was produced,” Pouillard says, adding this is encouraging, and will promote more sustainable conditions of production.
